Factors Influencing Empathy During Short-Duration Space Analog Missions

Empathy is the ability to understand and relate to the perspectives and feelings of another individual. A team’s ability to prevent and manage social conflict is closely related to the team members’ empathy, thus it is considered an important individual trait for astronauts operating as part of a spaceflight team. As part of a study monitoring crew psychological and behavioral indicators, twenty-six space analog mission crew members took pre-mission, during-mission, and post-mission questionnaires measuring empathy, stress, depression, irritability, loneliness, risk-taking, and intrinsic motivation. One mission was conducted at the Mars Desert Research Station (N=7), two missions at the Mars Arctic Research Station (N=10), and three missions at the Integrated Lunar/Mars Analog Habitat (N=9). Mission durations were between twelve and seventeen days. A multiple regression analysis with empathy as the dependent variable showed depression, irritability, loneliness, and several sub-categories of risk-taking and intrinsic motivation accounted for fifty-one percent of the space analog crew members’ empathy score variance. The ability of the psychological and behavioral questionnaires to account for empathy variance during space analog missions provides information about how changes in crew psychology during spaceflight may influence empathy and subsequently the crew’s ability to prevent and manage social conflict.